Canada’s Conservative government faced its first substantive controversy in its handling of the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon during the July 2006 conflict in that country. Within a year, another controversy was spurred by the passport requirements of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (in force since 2007). Upon applying for their passports, some people discovered that their Canadian citizenship was in doubt. Both cases raised similar questions in public debate and policy: what constitutes a Canadian citizen, what role do factors surrounding one’s birth and kinship ties have on one’s claim to citizenship and what obligations or attachments does a person have to undertake in order to be a citizen? But the cases also exposed differing responses towards the Canadians evacuated from Lebanon and the ‘Lost Canadians’ that reflect a racialized and ethnicized hierarchy of Canadian citizenship.
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